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If he gains any amount of satisfaction or enjoyment from doing something in the game, no matter how small, I'd say he's doing it right.

[✔] [item]Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker[/item] (Three)
[✔] [item]Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros[/item] (Two)
[✔] [item]32837[/item] & [item]32838[/item]
[✔] [item]Thori'dal, the Stars' Fury[/item]
[✔] [item]46017[/item]
[✔] [item]49623[/item] (Two)
[✔] [item]71086[/item]

I have to disagree.

By that logic, if someone sticks it in unwiped ass, and they enjoy it, they are doing it right.

But doing it in a poopy butt is wrong.

So wrong.

I still don't understand why you play if PvP is seemingly your only concern.
You never answered my question - how is achieving a goal in a BG etc a better form of validation than pet/mount collecting?


Grimmgor, I don't grasp how collecting things is pathological, least of all from the man who spends hundreds on games and genres he claims to hate.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

That's funny coming from you since you down talk WoW every chance possible. Especially when there is a blue comment on mmo-champion. I did answer your question before Mayo came. One involves mostly chance dice rolls and the other involves direct competition against others.

Druid: Meowth
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There are no blue comments on MMOC. MMOC just has a blue tracker tool.

I've stopped giving Blizzard money. Grimmgor still buys the (very expensive) very new releases he complains about on the extraordinarily silly basis that they don't look as real as reality, rather than going back and playing the superior vintage games he hasn't played, then implies that collecting is somehow strange or out-of-touch.



I challenge you to show me what I have because I was lucky with rolls.

Collecting isn't about dice rolls, it's about resourcefulness and ingenuity, with game mechanics, economics, and social interaction. Mounts and pets come from many different sources, so acquiring them all necessarily requires an outgoing and versatile playstyle.

I am an exceptionally creative and versatile person, and revel in exercising those elements of my personality, so naturally collecting appeals to me.

If you want to argue that WoW PvP is a better form of validation because it is based on "direct competition", then you must agree that it is worthless as such, because BGs are the least direct form of competition in existence as you have zero control over 95% of the variables in play (the gameplay and positioning of the other 13 players on your team and the 15 players on the opposing team) not to mention being fundamentally less balanced, skill-dependent and competitive than almost any other form of head-to-head action out there, from SSB to DotA to SC2 to EvE to CoD.

Even WoW arena pales in terms of its competitiveness to these other games (see: MLG's verdict), and we have every reason to believe GW2 will be no better (as both GWs are, like WoW, fundamentally PvE games with a PvP feature tacked on). The people who want competitive head-to-head aren't going to be playing what is really a second-string subgame tacked on to a MMO, they're going to be playing the games designed from the ground up for competitive play.

So why herald the superiority of your form of validation when you make the choice to partake in a way that least reflects your own standards for superiority?

And why hate? Seems to me like you're just lost way deep in denial about what you do and why.

A lot of people hate RPers because those who engage in willful suspension of disbelief are inherently offensive to those who engage in unwilling self-delusion. I think you feel the same way about competitiveness and self-fulfillment.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

i literally have no clue what you're talking about. i never bought cata, or sc2, and i'm not going to buy d3.

i'm pretty sure wrath was the last game i bought.

It only takes three coordinating players to win most random BGs. Regardless of what the rest of my team is doing, if I'm holding a flag in WSG the people around me are not likely to ignore it. Call Arena what you will, but it isn't going in and hoping for the best outcome. You still have to know how to respond and react as well as setting up your chains or whatever is available to you. I don't need someone saying "YEAH WELL YOU NEVER DID GOOD", that isn't the point.

Obtaining pets or mounts involves gold, time, and a dice roll on some. I don't know why you are denying this dice roll. The only way you are going to get Invincible or most of the other mounts you do not have is by getting lucky until Blizzard sells it or brings back the guaranteed drop. You have no control of it. That's great you still need other people to get you that far through the dungeon, but the end still remains random.


As for the video games, http://www.bitgamer.su/ exists.

Druid: Meowth
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Glorious Death Metal Music

It seems to be the point - your point - no?

Your argument was that PvP etc is superior validation because they involve competition yet you are now saying that there's almost no competition at all in your chosen pursuit.

Your argument was that collecting involves "mostly chance", i.e., "never did good" yet now you're saying that "never did good" "isn't the point", i.e., isn't a valid basis to criticize your preferred pursuit.

So which is it?
Does competition validate the game or doesn't it?
Is "never did good" is a valid basis to judge validation or isn't it?



Well first off, unlike you I neither bot nor farm. So my time and gold are not infinitely elastic variables.

I deny the dice roll because it's no more material than any other random selection in any game. If chance were the governing factor, or even nearly, the distribution of Invincible or any other collector item amongst those who would desire it would reflect pure probability. Obviously, it doesn't.

"The end" only appears random to you because you are looking at the entire equation backwards from the fatalistic standpoint of someone who sees only the end result, because you hate the concept of self-determination. You think that you win battles because of your leetness and lose them because of fate.

What you are completely missing is that whether the individual roll results in a drop is moot. Being a skilled collector is to know that chance doesn't matter, all doors will open - provided one takes the proper approach. It is that "approach" that is the deciding factor.

It's true of collecting just as it's true of poker or any other game with a strong element of chance.

Proof lays with the very example you cited: Invincible. Invincible actually has a much higher drop rate than almost any other rare mount currently in-game - about 10%, versus 1.5% for Ashes of Al'ar and .5% for Onyxian Drake. The fact that I've gotten very unlucky in farming it - it would be more likely than not that I'd have already seen it drop by now - doesn't dissuade me from calculating that I'm extremely likely to acquire it by MoP.

Nonetheless, very few people will ultimately acquire it, despite having far more than enough gold to hire mercs to help them farm the mount.

Conversely, I haven't bothered farming mounts with much higher and lower drop rates, or mounts that are guranteed: I simply don't care to do so. I don't have any of the metadrakes, and I haven't been regularly farming Bloodlord or Al'Akir.

Was it "chance" that got me the TLPD or plagued proto or Riding Turtle? No - it was that I had the drive and cunning to succeed where others would fail. What about Al'ar and the Azure Drake? Did the drop rate ever matter? Would it matter if it took me not 40ish weeks to farm them but over a hundred? Or was the driving factor not the chance itself but my willingness to take the chance?

But you in a BG are far more at the mercy of chance than I. For me, drop rates are a known variable, and I can plan my strategy around them. For you, you have no real control over the other players, and you invent any rationalization that pleases you for any outcome. All the while consciously avoiding challenges where your exposure to unknown and uncontrollable chance would be minimized.

Could you 2-3 man a 15-man BG? Could you take 12 morons and win versus a decent raid? No?

So whose wins and losses are more chance-driven here?

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

Not having direct control of some or most of the people on your team doesn't invalidate the competition argument. They are still trying to stay alive, heal, or kill whoever is in front of them. Same with myself, Weena, and one other guy we play with. If us three go to Lumber Mill there is a much better chance we can take out 4-5 guys there than if I go up there with two random people people we got grouped with. If you are clinging on to my "I don't need someone saying "YEAH WELL YOU NEVER DID GOOD", that isn't the point." quote that was in reference to Alfonzo being amazing and saving my ass more than enough times to reach 2200 in 3s. In pvp you can skew the odds in your favor. You cannot. I had 66-70% BG win rate the last time I looked at it but it seems they removed those stats from battle.net. I'm confident my chances are greater.

As for citing Invincible, that is the only mount I know you don't have because of your post in that other thread. Why would it matter if I said anything else? I'll keep denying that your will to succeed matters as long as you deny the /roll.

inb4 Mayo

Druid: Meowth
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This is a strawman.

The criteria in question for "competition" is not "direct control" over the participants but control over the competitive variables they represent - their strength and strategy.

You don't have that in a BG - that supremely important variable is up to chance.

The pickup group is therefore an inherently non-competitive format.

The same holds true in any team-based activity that has both PuG and teamplay formats, e.g., soccer and basketball.



WoW BGs? No fucking way.
Bots, idiots, honor farmers and jokers outnumber those actually playing the game by a vast margin.

This really cuts to it. You're a munchkin.

You play a non-competitive format in a ruthlessly competitive manner rather than move up to the formats that are legitimately competitive, and find the attitudes of those motivated by gamesmanship incomprehensible.



So what does that prove? You aren't controlling the odds, you're just ensuring they will always be in your favor.

The big calculation there is whether you get random bots, idiots, noobs, honor farmers, whatever, rather than clever players that know not to put their backs to the precipice.

If you encounter a mediocre DK/ele shammy duo up there you will lose every time.
If you don't, it's near-certain you will prevail.

In farming or otherwise acquiring a mount, the choices I make are far more controllable to me than who happens to have queued and stood on a particular node.

I mean don't get me wrong...I don't have a problem with BGing...I'm just saying that the argument that it's a more competitive or worthwhile approach to playing a video game than collecting virtual items is eminently absurd.



I already countered this argument. You're looking at the wrong side of the equation.

Individual chance is irrelevant. With the proper approach, all things are a matter of time; without it, they'll never come to pass.

I might as well argue that PvP takes no skill because you can't control misses, hits, procs and crits.



"See Sig".
...both parts of it.



I have already explained why your example matters.
1. Because not all (or even most) collector items are chance based
2. Because the premise of your argument is that the chance of a drop is the greatest determining factor in collecting success and this is provably untrue

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

The odds of winning the lottery increases the more times you play. I don't even care to continue this because you will just throw another wall of double spaced text at it and this is clearly going nowhere. The one thing I know for a fact is that I've stopped playing a game that was no longer entertaining and I can't say the same for you.


Stating you don't have a mount is nihilism. Okay.

Druid: Meowth
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Glorious Death Metal Music

We have established why this is not a valid point...because chance is provably not the most reliable predictor of who has what...



My hard counters have been no more than a sentence long.

You refuse to engage them but instead keep spouting arguments that have been already been refuted by way of reference to objective facts.



I barely log in.

Proof being: there's so much unpicked low-hanging fruit.



Actually, it is. Hence my point about the other half of my sig =)

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.